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Monthly Archives: March 2004

As we spoke desultorily for over an hour at his office in Soho, it was impressed upon me – by this amalgam of political commentator, activist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, broadcaster and powerful orator – that nothing is sacred and there can be no room for dogmas.

The UK’s so-called ‘New Vision for Refugees’ proves itself woefully inadequate, for it is not about solutions to a problem of international dimensions, so much as a self-regarding and self-interested attempt to minimise this country’s role, at the expense of refugees, asylum seekers, and less well off countries in the developing world.

There is general agreement now that culture is capitalism. Whether their value is financial or symbolic, the processes and products of cultural expression are widely acknowledged as submitted to an advanced network of capital transactions. The processes of global capitalism have long since invaded the sphere of artistic production.

Throughout Europe, asylum seekers are alienated and dehumanised in public discourse. Public policy and the media have transformed the public perception of an asylum seeker from a person whose presence is legal under international conventions to a liar, criminal, and cheat.

Psychologically, however, it boils down to one factor: the fear of a second Holocaust. Bi-nationalism, with or without a Palestinian majority, only becomes a spectre against the backdrop of such a horizon. To put it as bluntly as possible: Israelis are afraid that they will be marched into the gas chambers. Again.